Wildcard URLs in pages.xml?

[danielrowe]

I'm trying have my application recognize "custom" URLs, for example:

   http://www.domain.com/appname/town/TOWN_NAME 

where TOWN_NAME doesn't actually point to an existing .xhtml page.
In other words, I want to display a page that is common to all towns, but looks like the town has its own URL.

I though I could do this in pages.xml with something like:

    <page view-id="/town/*" action="#{TownManager.initTownInfo()}">
    </page>

which would call the TownManager.initTownInfo() method and lookup town information based on the URL, then redirect to a common town.xhtml page that has custom information available to it from the initTownInfo() method.

What I'm finding is that the wildcard in pages.xml (page view-id="/town/*) doesn't cause the action method to execute, possibly because there isn't actually an existing .xhtml page with a town name that matches.

Has anyone else dealt with this type of thing?

Thanks!

[lvdberg]

Hi,

maybe the Resteasy components can be helpful for you if it is your objective to just execute a single GET with a meaningful URL, which should return a specfic result.It works great althoufgh it is not really meant to return html-pages, but more to create simple webservices. Another posibility would be to use natural conversations. It's not exactly what you describe, but it gives a recognizable URL.

Leo

[danielrowe]

Thanks, Leo.  That was enough to get me looking into URL rewriting, which I think will handle the issue.  I'll try that out tomorrow...

[danielrowe]

Yes, urlrewrite is what I needed.


pages.xml:

    <page view-id="/town.xhtml" action="#{TownManager.initTownInfo}">
    </page>


urlrewrite.xml:

   <urlrewrite>
      <rule>
         <from>^/town/(.*)</from>
         <to>/town.seam?townname=$1</to>
      </rule>
   </urlrewrite>

[cbensemann]

Did you know you can also specify your rewrite rules in your pages.xml?

    <page view-id="/pages/person/viewPerson.xhtml" login-required="true">
        <description>View a person</description>
        <begin-conversation join="true"/>
        <param name="personId" value="#{viewPersonController.personId}"/>
        <rewrite pattern="/pages/person/viewPerson-{cid}/{personId}"/>
        <rewrite pattern="/pages/person/viewPerson/{personId}"/>
        <rewrite pattern="/pages/person/viewPerson"/>
    </page>

So in this example the url /pages/person/viewPerson.seam will be rewritten as one of the three rules specified (they are evaluated top to bottom and the first matching rule is used.)

/pages/person/viewPerson-1/123 This is an example of the first rule where 1 is the conversation id parameter and 123 is the personId parameter.

/pages/person/viewPerson/123 When there is no conversation id (second rule)

/pages/person/viewPerson When there is no conversation id or personId (third rule)